Devourer Of Destiny - Chapter 143
A couple of days later, Ebon Dirge sat and waited in a conference room he had reserved in the General Institute. He had abandoned his office in the Remedial Institute following his meeting with the Review Board, seeing no further purpose in setting himself up to play the game others wanted him to play. He was reasonably certain that between now and the now officially announced date of the teachers’ duel, someone may try to divert the entire thing with some manner of shenanigans, and so he made himself scarce so far as that office with his name on the door was concerned.
Sure, the vector of attack could change to say he was derelict in his duties as a tutor, but Dirge had already won that victory in front of the Review Board. The lack of structure for the remedial tutors was his shield. Had his wandering been a violation of anything coherently stated, he wouldn’t have been let off to issue his challenge. That the strategy held told him another vital point of data about the Academy’s management that he had suspected: it was mired in bureaucracy.
An entrenched bureaucracy indicated to Dirge that the upper realm custodian had experienced a severe mishap. It wasn’t the glacial pace of dealing with the wrench that he was throwing in the works — the founder-managers sent by the Missionaries often took a “wait and see” perspective of matters — but the almost open angling between the members of the Review Board in his session with them revealed that there were forces in conflict inside the Academy. Non-codified appeals to “tradition” and “regularity” were a bastion of a decadent aristocracy.
It was too bad that Dirge’s spiritual sense was sealed. He really would have liked to have followed back the transmission arrays to their owners. Knowing the identity of his apparent ally — the chairman of the session — would have been useful, and revealing the other two who had opened their mouths in hostility would have given him some targets to consider. There was no available explanation of how any of that was arranged, though, and so he had no leads to follow yet.
The sound of the conference room door opening returned Dirge to more immediate matters. Both of his students had completed their assignments, and so he had called them here to accept their work, continue their education, and acquaint them with each other.
“Theo, good to see you,” Dirge greeted the new entry with a small smile.
The young man bobbed his head. “Good morning, Miss Sable.” He looked around the conference room — a standard bland place with a central table and chairs, one of which Dirge was now occupying already — and blinked rapidly a few times. “Is there something special–?”
“I have someone else to introduce you to, Theo,” Dirge replied. “Don’t worry, it’s not because of the furniture thing, I had you hold off on that for other reasons that I’ll make clear once we’re all here. How was the auction, by the way?”
Dirge had contacted Theo a couple of times in the past few days. Holding off on the office furniture was the more recent development — he didn’t want the kid to go to the trouble of furnishing an office he would soon be leaving — but before that he had reached out to his first pupil and told him to visit the auction for Eloise’s sword and to help it along with fetching a better price.
Theo grinned widely. “The auction went swell! There was a guy who really, really wanted the sword, so driving up the price was easy.”
“Excellent. You did well,” Dirge commended his pupil. “I assumed that wasn’t your first time playing that game?”
Theo shrugged. “Playing chicken at the auction is a great way to pick up girls,” he replied nonchalantly, but then his eyes widened just a little and points of inflamed red flushed high on his cheeks as he realized who he was talking to.
Dirge laughed. “Have a seat, Theo. Our other attendee — the young lady who made that sword, by the way — should be here shortly.”
Theo nodded and picked out a chair to plop into. “So that’s why you had me do that, Miss Sable.”
“Of course,” Dirge confirmed. “Everything I do has a purpose of some sort. Was there some other reason you were thinking of?”
Theo shrugged again. “I figured you were pushing the envelope to see how far I’d go.”
Dirge reserved a chuckle for himself this time. The kid was occasionally smarter than he seemed, although he had misaimed on which lesson that applied to in this case. “While you misjudging and ending up with a sword on your mantle could have been a useful lesson in itself, no, I just wanted the notoriety of that sword’s auction to rise this time.”
Theo nodded thoughtfully in silence. About half a minute later, the conference room door creaked open and the final attendee of this little session arrived.
Eloise looked like an entirely different person from the last time Dirge had seen her. For one thing, she wasn’t wearing a smith’s apron this time, instead sporting a frilled blouse and form-fitting black cloth pants. The blotches on her dark skin from the constant crying were gone, and there was a brightness in her hazel eyes that revealed hopefulness and good cheer. Her tightly curled black hair seemed to have a life of its own, bouncing along with the spring in her step, instead of being that sweat-matted mess it had been.
“Welcome,” Dirge greeted the new arrival. “Eloise, this is Theo, also my student. Theo, this is Eloise, who I have told you about. Please, Eloise, have a seat.”
The two pupils regarded each other momentarily as Eloise made her way to a chair a couple of spaces away from Theo’s at the table. Dirge noticed a roguish glint in the young man’s eye to match the smith’s wary glance and was amused. When he was through with the pair, those looks would be entirely different, no doubt.
“You both had the same assignment this time,” Dirge remarked. “If you could present the results for evaluation, we can get started.”
The pair eyed each other another moment as piles of knotted ribbons appeared in front of them. Making sure to keep the sets separate, Dirge grabbed them with invisible hands of essence and slid them over for examination.
The progression on Theo’s ribbons was stark. It was easy to tell which ones had been the earliest attempts, with their gaps and variable knot sizes and tightness. Eloise’s ribbons, on the other hand, were tightly knotted and extremely neat from start to finish, the image of perfection.
Dirge selected a few ribbons from Theo’s pile. “I’m pretty sure that there is plenty of ribbon left here to knot, Theo,” he critiqued, holding up the worst offender. “That said, there is a marked improvement through the pile. Tell me, how did it feel, going through the entire stack?”
Theo gave a small shudder. “It felt like hell right at first, Miss Sable. I think I understand a bit more about that pain you were talking about when we started; my head hurt worse than when I hit it after a while. But then it got easier.”
Dirge nodded. “Excellent. That’s the way much of it will go: painful at first, but with time, practice, and effort you’ll improve. There’s still a lot of room for that, but it’ll do.”
Dirge then picked through Eloise’s ribbons. “Meticulous. Precise. Uniform. All traits of a practiced craftsman.”
“Thank you, Miss Sable,” Eloise replied.
“I wasn’t finished yet, my dear,” Dirge continued. “When I assign something in a specific way, I mean it. I specifically said to not involve external essence control in the process, but you clearly pressured these knots to make them tighter, did you not?”
Eloise blinked, surprised. “I-I just wanted to make them perfect, Miss–”
“Perfect is doing as you are told,” Dirge interrupted flatly. “I told you I could tell the difference, and I can. There are times for thinking outside the box, Eloise, but this was not one of them.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Sable,” Eloise replied, looking down at the table’s surface and trembling.
“Do you understand the purpose of this lesson, Eloise?” Dirge asked the smith.
Eloise studied the tabletop intently as she considered it before looking up. “It was an exercise of essence control, right?”
“That’s the surface lesson, yes,” Dirge responded, “but it wasn’t the only one. I was also gauging your capability to do things in a manner I dictate. There are dozens of other ways of practicing this kind of control, most of which don’t leave you shaking with a headache, but I had you two use this method because it was the one I selected. Consider this the easy version of the lesson, my dear; when I learned it, my own teacher sat and laughed at my bitter tears as I felt like my head was about to split open. I spared you that much.”
Eloise nodded mutely, while Theo’s eyes widened at the recitation.
“Now, Eloise, I saw you smirking at Theo’s performance,” Dirge continued. “I think you should understand that despite the imperfections of his technique, I rate his work higher because he followed my exact instructions. And before you feel smug and superior, I would have you understand that he only has a single meridian that he just opened right before he was given this assignment.”
Eloise gasped at that admission. Even with two meridians open, the task would have been monumentally easier, one meridian drawing in essence while the other did the work. With one, though, Theo would have had to take constant breaks for replenishment, all the while pulling essence one way or another. It was a world of difference.
“You are very talented in your vocation, Eloise, and so that gives you a right to some amount of arrogance. When it comes to other students at this school, and even the faculty, you can put that arrogance on display. But not in front of me, and not in front of your fellow pupils under me.”
“I understand, Miss Sable,” Eloise replied. “I’m sorry, Theo.”
Dirge gave the smith a tight smile. “It’s good that you understand because you’ve caused me a good bit of trouble and if all I was going to get was a bag of arrogance I might have considered dropping you. There will be plenty of opportunities to display your greatness to the world, my dear, but inside our little circle let’s rein it in some.”
Eloise’s eyes widened. “Trouble, Miss Sable? What kind of trouble?”
“Nothing terribly bad, my dear,” Dirge replied. “Harford — that fellow who booted you right before we met, I believe — decided to complain to the administration after I picked you up. It seems he’s distraught that I poached you from right out under his nose. I was brought up before a Review Board for it.”
“Oh heavens!” Eloise exclaimed, “I didn’t think that would happen, Miss Sable! Master Harford is a grump, but he did give me a lot of chances… I didn’t think he’d have a problem after he kicked me out!”
Dirge snorted. “It’s not a tremendous issue, just an annoyance. As is my right, I’ve issued a formal challenge to a teachers’ duel and the administration has arranged the terms already. In three days, we’ll be having a forging contest, since that’s how he’s decided to handle it.”
“Oh dear,” Eloise muttered, “oh dear, oh dear, oh dear…” She took a deep breath. “Master Harford is one of the foremost forging experts here on the Fifth Tier, Miss Sable. He’s a much better forgesmith than he is a teacher, truth be told.”
Dirge laughed. “Are you having second thoughts, Eloise? Do you think I’m some kind of pushover?”
“I-it’s not that, Miss Sable, just…” Eloise tried and failed to articulate more.
“He’s an experienced elder with an enormous amount of prestige to his name and a great many accomplishments under his belt? And yet he remains here on the Fifth Tier,” Dirge noted. “I’m not at all well known and forgesmithing is less a specialty and more a distaff skill in my arsenal. And yet I’m confident of winning, do you know why, Eloise?”
Eloise frowned. “Honestly? I’m not sure, Miss Sable.”
“That’s honest enough, I guess,” Dirge noted. “It’s because I’m in control of the situation, and because he doesn’t expect better from me. I insisted on the ribbon lesson because it is the cornerstone of having a level of essence mastery that nobody in the same realm can match. I, Harmony Sable, can make the impossible into the possible. Allow me to demonstrate this again for you. Theo, close your eyes; Eloise, open your spiritual sense and watch and learn.”
Both students immediately complied with the commands, as Dirge manipulated the ambient essence near Theo. Picking out four of the young man’s acupoints, he dilated them in sequence and connected their meridians, all without a word to either student. The entire process took about a dozen breaths to complete.
“Congratulations, Theo, you now have five open meridians,” Dirge announced, turning to look at a shocked Eloise. “Surprised, dear?”
“Th-that’s–!”
“Impossible?” Dirge cut in with a smile. “Hardly. The conventional wisdom dictates that meridian opening should be a collaboration of student and teacher when it isn’t just the student handling it alone because that’s the traditional way of doing it. To do otherwise is to risk severe damage and perforation, right?”
Eloise nodded, keeping her mouth clamped shut. Theo listened to the recital with a furrow in his brow, as though he was checking for any such injury.
“I don’t have that problem, because I’m in control and because I’m not limited by the traditional way,” Dirge continued. “I’m offering you the same kind of ability. The capacity to make the impossible into the possible. In three days, both of you will watch as I do it again, this time in full view of the Celestial Ascendance Academy. Any questions?”
Both students shook their heads in silence. “Good. Then let’s talk about what your next assignments will be.”